U-Haul U-Box® Reviews
Uhaul really has their crap together on this. Other than a bad number I got in an email. Once I sorted that out and called the correct number, everything went smoothly from delivery in the beginning to pick up at the end. And it didnt cost a fortune. And they kept you informed every step of the way. When your boxes were getting delivered, picked up, when they were traveling, when they arrived, when they were available for delivery to new address, and then when they were bringing it to you. I am a sceptic, and they did me right. So if you are in doubt, don’t be.
The corporate office doesn't communicate with the local offices. The dates you are told are guaranteed are not always actually a guarantee and can cause a tremendous amount of headache trying to rearrange everything especially if on a time schedule and have movers, etc arranged. Eventually the timing worked out fine and it was the cheapest option but a lot of hassle and time spent on the phone trying to coordinate.
Initial location in another state was mediocre. I had called Uhaul multiple times to see when boxes were going to be available. One box was delivered damaged. This put a delay in my loading my box. U-Boxes was delivered a day earlier at relocated state. Uhaul location in relocated state was great. Not sure if I would use U-Boxes again now that I have more options.
U-Haul U-Boxes are cost effective, but they called us the day before they were supposed to show up and told us that they didn't have any U-Boxes - Their manufacturer didn't deliver them, so they couldn't deliver to us. For violating their delivery "guarantee" they offered us $50 in compensation. They did reschedule to 2 weeks later and they showed up that time (hence the 2-star rating and not just 1-star), but I estimated the delay cost us $1,200 because we had to rent a truck and load our belongings into a storage unit, then rent a truck and unload them into the U-Boxes. One final comment, because U-Boxes are smaller, you have more "edges." It takes longer to load them effectively than a larger container. Just make sure you plan for that. Other than the above issues, they picked them up on time, so there is something. I wish I would have gone with a more expensive option that delivered on time because it was SO MUCH extra work - We essentially moved TWICE!
We packed up our 5,000 sq foot house in Illinois a year ago into 7 Ubox containers. At the time we were told that when we were ready for them the boxes would be dropped off at our new house. For a year, we paid 700$ a m month for storage and finally 6,000 too have the boxes shipped to our new home. However instead of bringing the boxes to our house, they shipped them to a U-haul facility 30 miles from us in Brunswick, GA. This facility has no way to move the boxes to our house so we were told to hire a moving truck and movers to unload the U-boxes, move them onto a truck and bring them to our house. WHAAAAAATTTTT????????? In the end the very nice manager and his wife ended up bringing the boxes to us 2 at a time, waiting for them to be unloaded, returning the empty boxes and then loading up 2 more boxes and driving them to us. This took FOREVER especially because we were paying movers to unload the boxes. The manager said that this happens to them several times a month-----uboxes are sent to their facility although they aren't set up to deal with them. Very disappointing!
Word to the wise: do not ever, ever, ever, EVER use uhaul. Worst experience of my entire life. So unprofessional. I cannot even begin to describe the misery they put me through. Delivered my box 9 hours late after losing it within the city then picked it up 8 hours late despite. And that is just the tip of the iceberg of the horrible experience I had with uhaul.
Very flexible regarding day to deliver the UBox and picking it up full. The UBox contained complimentary clean/wrapped furniture pads! They put in a paper to cover to floor to help keep your belongings clean. Though we are worried about potential water penetration, the UBox remained dry after a day or two of some rain prior to our filling it with our belongings.
The benefit of the UBox over others evaluated was that the cost of adding / removing a box to my order was a known marginal fee. That is helpful if you just don't know how many that you need ahead of time. What I didn't like is the flexibility of loading / unloading on my own time. We loaded on a single day and were given one day to unload. These boxes are also not great for large items (Sofas, etc.). We ended up leaving many large items behind.
This service is still very new and U-Haul has some training to do with it's employees and also they have computer program issues they should resolve. Overall, the team members at each end who were actually DOING the work were awesome to work with. We needed more boxes than the estimate told us. I think their algorithm needs to be re-worked for what each box can hold. We used 10 U-Box containers and 6 were estimated for us. We had a 3 BR home with a garage.
We were in a delivery window between 12 and 2 p.m. The driver called and said she would be there closer to 2:00. The movers were there at 1:00 and it cost me more money because U box did not start out in time to get here in their time window. I understand they ran into a problem on the highway; however, pro's should build in time for mishaps that slow things down. I had people waiting and it cost me an additional $200.